230979

ASTEROIDAmor near-Earth asteroid

ILLUSTRATION FROM ALBEDO 0.207 · RADIUS 0.761 KM

[

OVERVIEW

] ASTEROID

230979 is an Amor near-Earth asteroid. Its absolute magnitude () is 16.58. It orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 2.857 . Its effective radius is 0.76 . It is catalogued as 230979 (2005 AT42). It was discovered in 2005.

WHAT IT IS
Amor near-Earth asteroid
HOW FAR
2.857

Its average distance from the Sun, not from Earth.

HOW BIG
0.76

The radius of a ball that would look the same size — the body itself is not round.

HOW BRIGHT IN ITSELF (H)

How bright it would look from a fixed, standard distance — a measure of the object rather than of the view from here.

ONE ORBIT TAKES
4.82

One trip round the Sun.

[

OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see 230979 for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.

[

CATALOG DATA

] 15 FIELDS

The raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.

HOW BRIGHT IT IS

What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.

Albedo

THE ORBIT

The shape of the path, where the object sits on it, and the instant those figures were true of. An orbit is a fit to observations and drifts away from the real one either side of its epoch.

Orbital period
4.819
Eccentricity
Inclination
11.21
Longitude of ascending node
156.88
Argument of perihelion
52.87
Mean anomaly
129.63
Element epoch
2461200.5000
Perihelion passage
2460565.3900
Minimum distance from Earth's orbit
0.172
Orbit class
AMO

WHEN IT WAS FOUND

Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.

Discovered by
LONEOS
Discovered from
Anderson Mesa
Discovered on
2005-01-15
First observed
2004-12-20
[

ALSO KNOWN AS

] 2 DESIGNATIONS
  • Asteroid 230979
  • Asteroid 230979 (2005 AT42)
[

LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE

] 1 SERVICE

Each link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.

[

CITE THIS PAGE

] DR1

This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.

PLAIN TEXT
SpaceCatalog. 230979 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/230979
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_230979,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{230979}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/230979},
  note         = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from JPL Small-Body Database.}
}

The values above were taken from JPL Small-Body Database — Public domain (NASA/JPL). Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue.

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